"The solution does not just include policing — although we'll continue to look for ways to put more police where they're needed. We also have to give our young people alternatives to the street, and as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors."

As Sunday night crept (no doubt cautiously) to Monday morning, residents of the South Chicago neighborhood endured a firefight. They witnessed a tide of mayhem worthy of urban war zones worldwide. This is not how Chicago wants to build its reputation as a global city. Imagine the terror of children and adults in homes on those besieged streets:

The Tribune's Peter Nickeas reported from the scene that police officers responding to frequent shootings kept interrupting one another on their radios to report still new bursts of gunfire. So-called weapons wagons — SUVs loaded with lockers of rifles — delivered fresh throw-weight to cops who at times ran down streets toward the percussion of flying bullets. SWAT teams dressed in green walked the streets with regular officers dressed in blue. Overhead, a law enforcement helicopter circled in a futile attempt to quiet the rampage.

When I left Chicago's Southside 10 years ago it took me about 3 years to rid myself of PSTD; however some residuals remain and will always be there. Don't get me wrong, I loved the city and had lived both on the North and South sides. Living on that South side though you come face...

And that was but one among dozens of shooting scenes in Chicago over a weekend meant to celebrate this nation's birth. In the roughly 84 hours from 3:10 p.m. Thursday until 3:30 a.m. Monday, gunfire struck 82 people, 14 of them fatally. Both tallies include two boys shot by police: a 14-year-old who allegedly pointed a long-barreled .44-caliber revolver at officers, and a 16-year-old who — after first eluding cops who had responded to a report of shots fired — allegedly refused officers' instructions to drop a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun as he crawled out from beneath a car.

That's right, a 14-year-old wielding a .44-caliber revolver and a 16-year-old with a semi-automatic handgun.

We can empathize with police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who on Monday questioned whether a "fatigue factor" among officers contributed to the carnage. McCarthy is searching for an explanation and isn't ducking the possibility that he and his department could have better managed their resources. But police officers didn't distribute guns to youngsters. And police officers didn't go calling for trouble in South Chicago. Trouble came calling for them in burst upon burst of smoking gunplay.

The easy diagnosis, in many Chicagoans' eyes, is that the Chicago Police Department needs more officers. Maybe so. But that's asking for more dollars from a City Hall that is drowning in debt after decades in which politicians spent money Chicago couldn't realistically anticipate as revenue on costly obligations Chicago couldn't afford. Whatever it took to get re-elected. Thursday's decision from the Illinois Supreme Court — a ruling that retiree benefits promised by the pols are sacrosanct — suggests that the city may have to slash policing and other services before it ever can dream of hiring more cops.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel made eminent sense with his insistence Monday that "as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors." Preaching personal responsibility — cajoling parents to exert more discipline, cajoling young people to steer clear of gangs, cajoling crime witnesses to help the police — isn't a popular pastime for many Chicago politicians. But Emanuel, who's vociferously impatient on his calm days, evidently has read about too many shootings and looked too many grieving parents in the eyes.

The mayor was similarly pointed after Easter weekend, when violence killed nine people and wounded another 36: "Every child deserves a childhood, regardless of where they live. But to do that, our city and community, the neighborhoods that make up this city, cannot live by a code of silence. They have to live by a moral code. Now I've read some of this, and I just want to say this, when some people go: 'Well, it's the weather.' It's whether you have values."

The next time you hear someone blame the cops for Chicago street violence, remember South Chicago: Police commanders threw virtually everything they had at that breakdown of civil society, and still the shooting roared.

If Chicago is to conquer this plague of violence in Chicago, the solutions have to come from all of us.

If you're a parent or if you know one, that starts with you.

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The outbreak of violence over the long Fourth of July weekend – the worst of the year so far -- once again drew unflattering national attention to Chicago’s crime woes as police Superintendent Garry McCarthy insisted the department had conditions under relative control until a particularly violent...

At least 13 people have been shot in Chicago at the start of the long holiday weekend, including a woman killed as she sat on a porch near Garfield Park and a man slain in front of a hair salon on the South Side, police said.